VI 
HARD CLIMBING 
65 
Those nearest the surface had some fine stalactites. 
In several places there were long straight tunnels 
leading from one chamber to another, and here we 
went through a good deal of burrowing ; farther on 
there was a sound of muffled thunder and the 
distant roar of a mighty underground cataract ; these 
subterranean rivers are found in most of the caves in 
this dry country, they bar the passage to other caves 
beyond and seem to terminate in the depths below. 
Those of the party who had long backs and legs found 
them a good deal in the way and were considerably 
bruised, as well as shaken. Once we found ourselves 
on the edge of a vast precipice where our lights threw 
no shadow, and where no gleam caught the rock across 
the black abyss. Now on hands and knees we squeezed 
our bodies through tunnel -like holes and emerged at 
the other end sometimes to find ourselves imprisoned 
against a precipitous wall of rock, at others in lofty 
chambers again, where countless ages of time and 
capricious Nature had fashioned and chiselled the rocks 
into such fairy-like wonders that we felt tempted to 
bite a little finger to convince ourselves that we still 
lived in a substantial world of men. Making our 
way back was hard work, it needed a strong arm 
and a firm step and head to crawl up some of the 
rocky projections, and our hands and knees for many 
days after bore painful evidence of sharp pinnacles 
and rocky edges in the struggles to get over and under 
them, but the fascinations of these wonders are so 
strong that curiosity compels you to go forward. 
I spent one day with a little native boy on a flower- 
hunting expedition. We went in search of a particular 
plant that grows only on a certain ridge of these lime- 
stone rocks. He had such a delightfully vague idea 
of its whereabouts that we never reached the spot. 
F 
